Why write a book about the European Union as a crisis manager? The response to safety and security threats falls in the traditional domain of the nation state. What role could the EU possibly play when it comes to dealing with floods, electricity breakdowns, epidemics, or terrorist attacks?

Our search for an answer to this question began some ten years ago. In those post-9/11 days, two of the authors met over coffee at Leiden University's Department of Public Administration. One (a crisis management researcher) had been studying how national governments were preparing for the possibility of a smallpox attack (a major worry in those days). He had understood that small countries like the Netherlands could never cope with such an event and would rely on cooperation with its neighbors. Surely, he asked, the European Union would play a dominant role in the response to a smallpox outbreak?

The other author (an EU researcher) found this a silly question. He explained that the EU was never intended or designed to “manage crises.” True, the EU did send military and civilian missions to foreign hot spots and there was financial support for humanitarian aid in disaster-stricken countries. But the EU did not manage crises or disasters on the European continent. Yet the question lingered: what role could the EU play in response to a large-scale crisis or disaster?